The newly fiercing COVID-19 wave is enveloping many developing countries across the globe and it is placing severe strain on the healthcare system in respective countries. Countries ranging from Laos to Vietnam in Southeast Asia, and South Asian countries such as India, Bhutan, Nepal, and many others have been reporting a sudden surge in the number of infected people in the last few weeks.
In the middle of summer in Asia, more contagious variants of the virus have affected the countries, which have limited resources to curb the spread of the virus. Relaxation on the restriction on movement, social gatherings, and lack of resources at many remove places have also been cited as reasons behind this sudden increase in an active number of cases in the last few weeks. In Nepal, the health ministry sought medical equipment, supplies, and treatment as hospitals are quickly filling up and running out of oxygen supply.
Laos, a landlocked country in Southeast Asia that has not shown a single report of death in 2020, with only 60 recorded cases are facing a huge shortage of emergency supply of medicines and manpower, as cases jumped more than 200 times in just the last four weeks. The health care system in Thailand is also reaching its breaking point where 98% of the new COVID-19 cases are from the highly infectious strain of the virus. For some small island countries, a new wave is just the first time for their system, as the number of cases remained pretty low in the last year. Although, nowhere close to India’s size and population, the reported spike in cases in these relatively small economies has been steeper, signalling the potential risk of an uncontrolled spread.
In the last week of April, India has reported around one million new cases as hospitals and crematoriums in the country are working round the clock to cope with the high and growing number of deaths. Adding to the crisis, health care facilities are also experiencing a shortage of medical oxygen making it more challenging to treat distressed patients in many large cities.
The first outbreak in some places that mostly avoided the scourge in 2020 heightens the urgency of running vaccination campaigns. Hans Kluge, the regional director at the World Health Organization for Europe said that there is still a huge challenge ahead as the change in newly recorded infection has reached its peak point. If ranked by change in active cases in the last month over the previous month, Laos has reported 220 times more cases, while Nepal and Thailand saw skyrocketing growth of more than 10 _times in the last month. Bhutan, Trinidad and Tobago, Cambodia, and Fiji have also witnessed the epidemic erupt at a high three-digit pace. David Hayman, a professor of infectious diseases epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has also said that all nations are currently at risk, as the disease appears to be becoming endemic and will therefore likely remain a risk to all nation for the foreseeable future as new variants of virus many require new vaccines and a booster for already vaccinated people that will delay the control of the pandemic.
